Artists

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Artists

Escher String Quartet

About

By 1896, at the age of twenty-five, Alexander Zemlinsky was one of the rising stars in the Viennese musical firmament. His first opera had been written, he had won a number of awards, and he had earned the support of Johannes Brahms.

In July of the same year, he began writing his first string quartet, a work of sweeping lyricism, rich dance patterns, and self-confidence, couched within the bounds of a relatively conventional palette.

Seventeen years later he began his second quartet - kaleidoscopic in effect, mood and technical demands, and redolent of the music of the new century, led by his brother-in-law Arnold Schoenberg, it was to place Zemlinsky securely in the European avant-garde.